Secret Lives
by UpsideDownCake
Summary: House hires Lucas to snoop around in Cuddy's life and he finds things that neither of them were expecting. Previously posted to LJ, but with changes.


**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, please don't sue.

**A/N: **I'm new at this, and what follows is the result of some pretty random late night inspiration, so I'm not sure how it turned out. If you like it, or if you don't, please hit a button and let me know.

**Secret Lives**

_**Lucas:**__ What do you think you're going to find out about her?_

_**House: **__Something personal, something __embarrassing.__ I spend half of my life negotiating _

_with that woman, anything I can use to scare her into saying yes._

(s05 e03)

Lucas forced his eyes off the door and looked around the inside of the run down little coffee shop, trying to find something to take his mind away from thoughts of the up coming meeting with Dr House. He'd never been in here before. In the evenings it was usually full of students drinking JD in dark corners and pretending to be "alternative" as they listened to bad jazz music and smoked cheap herbal cigarettes, but even they stayed away from the crumbling interior in the daylight. The PI wondered briefly why they bothered opening before 8pm at all. He was the only customer there, so far as he could tell, and the revenue from the single cup of black coffee he'd been nursing for the past half hour was hardly likely to be enough to cover the wages of the poor schmuck behind the counter. He sighed, took another mouthful of coffee, and went back to watching the door.

House's being late never surprised him – Lucas swore that the only reason the other man owned a watch was so he could tell exactly how late he was going to be for any given occasion- but today it bothered him. This place wasn't that far from the hospital, and the longer he spent waiting here for House, the more likely it was that someone else would find him. His eyes flicked down nervously to the manila envelope in front of him. He really didn't want to be found, and by one person in particular. Still, he tried to reassure himself, how likely was that? This wasn't exactly the type of establishment that appealed to respected medical professionals. Unless you included House in that group. He smiled briefly at the thought of anyone describing Greg House, the original medical anarchist, as professional. Then the smile disappeared, because the fact that this was exactly the type of place House would pick to hide in was reason enough for concern. The universe was a thing of balance, and where it gave one maverick doctor the opportunity to escape the work he hated, it also made sure that if he was gone for too long his gorgeous boss would be able to track him down. The PI really did not want to explain the contents of that envelope to Lisa Cuddy.

She hadn't liked it when she'd found him going through her desk a couple of weeks ago, and while she'd looked hot standing over him with one hand on a hip and those stormy blue eyes snapping with pique, he really didn't want to see how she'd react to discovering that he'd followed her around for the last five days; especially given what was in that envelope. There was nothing embarrassing - no dates with transsexuals or secret pole dancing lessons - but she seemed to have worked hard to keep some parts of her private life away from her very public existence as Dean of Medicine. Things that she surely wouldn't appreciate Lucas sharing with someone as indiscreet as House. For the first time since he'd set himself up as a Private Investigator, he was starting to regret taking a job. He liked this woman, had wanted to get to know her better, and he had let House convince him that spying on her for money was an ok way of doing it. Now he felt like he was about to betray her.

She was never going to want anything to do with him if he did this. If he didn't do it the odd friendship he'd started up with house would suffer instead. Both mattered. Crap. He could have hardly put himself in a worse position if he'd tied himself between wild horses and arranged for two lorries full of candy apples to drive past in opposite directions! He took a big swallow of coffee, not even noticing that it was completely cold by now, and tried to resign himself to the fact that no matter what he did now he was shafted. A very cynical little voice somewhere in a forgotten corner of his mind muttered that perhaps this was what House had intended all along. Still, evil genius or not, if the doctor was any later for this meeting Lucas would be able to leave with his conscience clear. House, of course, limped through door before he had even finished his coffee. He crossed the dingy room in four uneven strides and slammed the top of his cane down pointedly on top of the envelope.

"So," the doctor smirked, "dig up any dirt on the delicious Dean?"

Lucas smiled back almost despite himself, "What happened? Angry patient try to knock you out with a rhyming dictionary?"

"Nope." House told him, easing down into an unoccupied chair, "Rhyming is for kindergärtners, Yankee fans, and idiots that think a dirty limerick is the hight of literary accomplishment."

"OK. So what was that thing you did with all the Ds?" asked Lucas.

"Alliteration. What have you got for me?"

"Don't you want some coffee first?"

"Not from here. Gimme."

The PI sighed and opened the envelope, sliding a photograph across the table "You know she's gonna hate me now, right?" he asked, but House wasn't listening. He was already staring at the picture.

The photograph must have been taken on Monday because Cuddy was wearing a sinful little black suit with his favorite red blouse, and the location was pretty obvious too, given the number of grave stones, but neither of these details were particularly interesting. He'd already known that she'd left early that day, about the same time as he'd been wrist deep in parasitic liver, in fact. Her visiting a cemetery was only noteworthy if she'd also developed over sized canines, and a taste for blood and prancing around with the undead in sheer white nightdresses. Everybody dies, ergo everybody knows someone who already has. The living, while often infuriating, were far more intriguing, and this picture seemed to be case in point.

Cuddy was as rigid and uncomfortable as he'd ever seen her. Shoulders were forced back, lean muscles bunching under her jacket, spine straight, ass and calves visibly tightened. She looked moments away from either exploding in blazing anger, or running for her life. Knowing Cuddy as he did, House would normally have bet on the former, but something about this particular scene made him unsure. The way her gaze was locked straight ahead, deliberately ignoring both the headstone before her and the dark haired woman in the wheelchair to her right, unnerved him, clashing as it did against all his expectations of how she should act. Lisa Cuddy did not shy away from confrontation; she thrived on it. It was what made her such an enjoyable sparing partner. More than just quick whit and a sharp tong, it was the way her eyes flashed as she pushed her self into his space, the gentle flush that rose across her skin, the sudden hand gestures, the increased rise and fall of her lovely chest, and the slow seductive smile when she thought she had the upper hand. Arguing with Cuddy was a full body experience. It was loud, and intense, and almost sexual in its ability to excite; something they had both come to perversely crave in their working lives. It was also completely missing from the picture in front of him.

Instead she was deliberately avoiding the source of her tension. He thought it was as if she knew that she'd break down if she turned. That was strange too, because in all the time he'd known her he'd never seen Cuddy scared or intimidated by anyone. The unassuming figure in the chair had managed the impossible. She had marched – figuratively- through the firey gates of hell, stared down the devil, and turned his dark mistress into a powerless shadow of herself. House found himself hating her for it.

"Who's the cripple?" he asked, careful to keep his tone neutral.

Lucas smirked, punching the air in a deliberately poor impression of every gangster rapper he'd ever seen on tv, and said. "You da cripple!" The bad joke fell even flatter than he'd anticipated, but the awkward silence afterwards was mercifully short.

"The cripple in the picture, Moron!" House snapped, taking satisfaction in the way the goofy smile fell from the detective's face. "If I'd wanted to waste time cracking home-boy jokes, I would have at least made sure that Foreman was around to get pissy about them. Who is she?"

Instead of answering, the PI took something else out of the envelope and put it down on top of the photograph. It was a Maryland driver's permit. House picked it up. "Miriam Greenberg. You stealing from the disabled now?" He asked.

Lucas tried to look shocked at the accusation, then gave up and shrugged. "Like you care,"

"I care enough to check my wallet after you've gone,"

"I didn't steal it." But Lucas never could lie, and all it took was House's raised brows to make him add a guilty "I might have bumped into her later in the day, though, and it might have fallen out of her bag."

"Sneaky bastard." House smirked, although if it was because he approved, or simply because he'd been right, was anyone's guess. "So, is she important, or has Cuddy just taken up collecting cripples?"

The PI smiled back. "You wish. She's Lisa's sister."

If Lucas hadn't been so nervous about the outcome of this meeting he might not have been studying the other man's face quite so intently for any sign of a reaction, and would surely have missed the minute tightening at the corner of House's eyes. The rest of the doctor's face was a study in indifference, but that one small twitch told him enough. House was surprised, or possibly angry. Lucas really wanted it to be the former, although he couldn't work out what a man who was inquisitive enough to hire an investigator to snoop into the private lives of his fellows, and broke into patients homes on a regular basis would find so surprising about the recent revelation. If it turned out House was angry, for some even more unfathomable reason, the PI would have to be very careful about any future health care decisions. He slid his chair back slightly, out of cane's reach.

"You knew she had a sister."

House nodded. Of course he had known, he just hadn't been interested in her until now. Miriam, and he'd known her name was Miriam now he thought about it, had never really mattered. She'd been some faceless relative of Cuddy's, mentioned in passing every now and then, but never the focus of attention. There had been nothing to suggest any type of tension between the two women until that picture. It could have been a recent thing, he supposed, but he doubted it. The photograph spoke to him of old wounds; lingering disappointment and sustained ire rather than fresh rage. If that was true then Cuddy had been successfully hiding it from him, maybe for years, and it made him wonder if she'd fed him those occasional casual references to her sister to stop him getting suspicious. She was bright enough and devious enough to do it, and she knew him, maybe a little too well. He'd always been able to tell when Wilson was having trouble at home because of the way he'd suddenly become reluctant to talk about his wife, or nurse Linda from ICU, or Debbie from accounting. Cuddy, who could be scarily observant at times, must have realized this, and made sure she didn't make the same mistake. He was strangely pleased that she'd made the effort.

Lucas had watched House's silence with growing unease was slightly disturbed by the small crooked smile that now emerged on the other man's lips. He was convinced that what ever thought had caused it, it was going to mean bad things for him. Then he told himself to stop being so paranoid. The dingy, mobster meeting-place ambiance of the coffee shop must have been getting to him more than he thought. Still, he wished he could get more of a reaction out of House than a slow nod and that damned smile.

"House?" He prompted.

"I didn't know the sister had her own wheels." a pause, then an exaggerated leer and "Think she'd give me a _ride_?"

Lucas shook his head, "Not funny,"

"And 'ghetto cripple' was? She'd be a natural at the sit and spin!" The line sounded forced, though, even to House's own ears. It was too harsh, too obvious an attempt to distract or offend, and one look at the PI told him that it wasn't working.

He sighed. "I suppose it explains a few things,"

That was true, at least. He had often wondered why, even in the early days after the infarction, Cuddy's attitude toward him hadn't really changed. Everyone else had bent over backwards to make allowances, willing to write off almost any indiscretion because of his leg, but not Cuddy. Now he knew that she'd had practice. If you could manage lasting anger towards your own sister while she was in a wheelchair, shouting at a jerk with a cane would be easy. It brought up another question though. What made a woman who didn't generally have a vindictive temper, and who had managed to put up with all his crap over the years just fine, want to turn her back on a sibling? Had to be huge.

"They don't look happy," said House, hoping that pseudo-casual observation would get the PI to volunteer whatever other information he had. There had to be something, he reasoned, because Lucas was still here, nervous and clearly uncomfortable in their current surroundings.

"Cemeteries aren't happy places," came the unhelpful reply.

House started to tap his cane on the floor, deliberately trying to annoy the already anxious investigator. If Lucas could be irritating, so could he. With any luck it would provoke him into spilling his guts. Worked on Wilson often enough.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Bounce. Tap. When nothing was forthcoming after a couple of minutes of mild sonic torture, House decided to try a more direct approach.

"How long's the sister been in the chair?" He asked.

"About eight years," Lucas replied quietly before reaching into his envelope for the final piece of evidence. If what he'd discovered hadn't been so serious he would have been proud about the way he'd drawn out his revelations, slotting each piece together like the parts of one of House's medical puzzles. It added a sense of drama to the occasion, one he was sure the older man would have appreciated had Cuddy's secret been something else. He put a newspaper clipping down on the table. He'd done his job, but if House found anything to be pleased about in all of this, he didn't think he 'd working for him again.

"There was a traffic collision. She was driving, got pinned under the steering column when the front of the car collapsed, they managed to cut her out, but her legs were crushed and they damaged the spinal cord when they moved her." The PI leaned forward and pointed to a few lines at the bottom of the article, but although he tried, he was unable to meet House's eyes. "The kid in the passenger seat wasn't so lucky,"

House stared at the lines that identified the dead child, not wanting to believe what he was reading. "Are you sure this is right?" he asked.

Lucas nodded.

"Shit."

Any body else would have balked when their office door was thrown open with enough force to damage its wooden frame and rattle the glass. Their heart might have skipped a beat, they might have shot from their seat in panic, and they might have yelled for security. All of these were reasonable responses, and yet Cuddy didn't so much as glance up from the academic reports in front of her. It wasn't that they were particularly fascinating -one first year clinical assessment was much like another- or that her reactions were any slower than normal that afternoon, it was just that she figured it wasn't worth the effort. The hospital had already suffered its quota of gun toting maniacs for the decade, and it was hardly unusual behavior for the only other person who'd do such a thing. Besides, the door would be fine, it had stood up to his abuse remarkably well over the last few years, and she knew that he'd be bellowing the reason for his intrusion at her in a few seconds. One. Two. Thr-

"Why didn't you tell me?!" House demanded, stalking towards the desk.

She frowned, but continued to annotate the report in front of her. "That you'd have to learn to make your own coffee now that your new team has some level of job security? Sorry, I thought as the head of _Diagnostics_ you'd manage to work it out for your self!" No wonder the student had questioned his final grade; the doctor who'd been observing him didn't even seem able to string together a coherent sentence!

House's eyes narrowed. He was far from in the mood for one of their verbal fencing matches, and the fact that she wasn't giving him her full attention only made it worse. "Damnit Cuddy! This is serious."

Concerned by the unexpected note of desperation in his voice, Cuddy pushed her work to one side and finally looked up into his eyes. "What is it House?" she asked.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He repeated, quieter this time, and placed the newspaper cutting down between them.

She gasped, recognizing it immediately, and reached out for it. "Where did you get this?" Her words were steady, but for all her strength she couldn't keep her hands from shaking, or the tears from collecting in her dark lashes. Even after all this time, even without having to read that damned article again, it still stung like nothing else she'd ever known. Like someone had forced a hot knife straight into her heart and was gleefully twisting it. Only this time that 'someone' was House.

"Does it matter?" and again, "Why didn't you tell me?"

She stood, eyes hardening as pain turned into anger, and lashed out. "Yes it matters! You had no right, no right at all to go digging through my personal life." it didn't matter that he'd done it before, that she shouldn't have been surprised, "So congratulations, House, you've finally found the one thing I didn't want you to! The one thing thats gonna hurt every damned time you throw it in my face!"

For possibly the first time in his life, House was truly ashamed, not because of what he'd found but because of what she believed him capable of. He didn't care what his team thought about him, the bigger a bastard he was in their eyes the better, but Cuddy mattered. He'd thought that she understood him, most of the time at least, and she thought he'd do something like that to her. What kind of bastard was he? He felt compelled to defend himself.

"I wouldn't do that," he said.

"You already have!" she yelled, shoving the article back across the desk towards him.

The paper slipped off the table top and fluttered to the floor at his feet, his eyes following it when he found he was unable to look at her. "I'm sorry,"

"Not good enough." He knew it wasn't.

Nothing he could say would be good enough now, no matter how much he meant it. The best thing he could do would be leave. Let her deal with her pain without him as an audience. He turned back towards the door.

A small, pale hand shot out and grabbed his wrist as he started to move. "Is that it?" she asked, voice quiet but intense. "You're just going to go away without your answer?" her grip tightened, nails digging into his arm like talons, and he heard her take a short painful breath before forcing herself to continue. "Does this mean that little to you?"

"No, I-

"Sit down, House." It was a command.

He obeyed without question, and at another time she might have smiled wryly at that. All it had taken was a sudden uncharacteristic onset of guilt over the emotional destruction of one of his oldest acquaintances to make him do what she told him.

"Look at me."

He did. He met her burning hurt-filled eyes with his own full of remorse, and it was all it took to break her completely. The anger fled as quickly as it had appeared and she crumpled in her chair. Her hands came up to shield her face as the tears finally slipped free, and her slim shoulders shook with effort, but she was utterly, hauntingly silent as she cried in front of him.

He watched her for a few minutes, wanting to offer comfort, but awkward and not really sure what he could do. He couldn't hold her while she was in her chair, and he didn't think she'd want him to. She valued her strength and her independence too highly to allow much public display of emotion, and touching her now would just remind her that someone was watching. Instead he stood and let her cry, waiting for her to steady herself before nudging a box of tissues to her with his cane.

Taking the tissues, Cuddy dried her eyes and offered him a weak nod. "He might have just been another puzzle to you, House, some kid you'd never met but whose existence annoyed you because it meant that you didn't know every little thing about me-

House shook his head. "I didn't-

"You did. Thats what it was." She was calmer now, and it didn't sound like the accusation it could have been, just an acceptance of the way things were. The way he was. "You hate not knowing."

"Ok,"

"He was a mystery, another case to solve, and I suppose thats ok _for you_, but he was _my_ son."

There, she'd said it. The dead child in the newspaper, that smiling little boy in the picture with a mop of chocolate colored curls and his mother's pale stormy eyes, had been her son.

House nodded, "So, what was he like?" he wasn't sure she'd want to say any more, but people said talking helped, and despite his generally low opinion of the mental health profession he'd met at least one who wasn't a complete idiot.

It must have been the right thing to say, because Cuddy even managed a small smile as she told him "His name was Aaron, and he was.......," she shrugged, and finally settled on "happy."

"I'd be happy too if my mom had a rack like yours!" House smirked, glad for the opportunity to drag their conversation back onto familiar ground.

She rolled her eyes but otherwise ignored the comment, "He was curious about everything, and he had no fear at all. He always managed to get into mischief, no matter how carefully he was watched." the smile got even bigger, "I can remember one time when I was trying to do some work at home, and he was playing on the rug next to me. One minute he was bashing his bear against my leg, the next he was pulling the lamp off the desk by the cord. Somehow when I tried to stop him he managed to grab the paper I'd been working on instead and it ended up scattered all over the floor. Aaron thought it was great and started kicking the pages around and stamping on them like dried leaves."

"Sounds like a great kid,"

"He was," she agreed quietly.

Silence overcame them for a few moments, the hard calculating expression he usually wore replaced by something softer as he looked at her. There were tears in her eyes, and her skin was flushed, but she was still smiling and her breathing was steady now. A little broken, but beautiful, and most importantly, calm. Even though he knew that this was the wrong time to push, he wondered if maybe now she'd give him the answer he'd wanted.

"So why'd you keep him a secret?"

"I didn't," Her shoulders tensed, and she shook her head. It sounded horrible when he said it like that. As if she was ashamed of Aaron. As if she'd been hiding him away like he was some dirty little mistake in her perfect life. "It wasn't like that. It was just that he was ....gone before I took this job. No-one here knew him, or me really,"

House frowned. It sounded reasonable, which given the _un_reasonableness of the situation and the feelings involved, made him think she was over simplifying things. Not only that but there was something about what she _had _said that bothered him. "What about me?" he asked, "I've known you for twenty years,"

"You're an insensitive ass!"

"Yes, but that hasn't stopped you trusting me with other stuff." He pointed out.

She sighed, running a hand back through her thick curls. "You weren't around when it happened, and then there was the infarction; and Stacey. And I didn't want you to be right."

"About what?"

"About me. You said I'd suck at being a mother, you've said it more than once."

What House saw in her eyes as she told him this made him swallow nervously. It reminded him so much of how she'd looked that last night. There was so much pain there, so much heat and anguish threatening to pull him in, to make him not so alone with it all. It made him want to reach down and kiss her again because he knew in these moments that she'd understand. He didn't though. Instead he gripped his cane more tightly and forced himself to look away.

"I also said you'd be great," he said, "And you are. Rachel-

"God, what if something happens to her too?" Cuddy interrupted him, voice caught somewhere between panic and uncertainty.

House sighed. He knew he wasn't good at being supportive, but he owed it to her to try, at least. "It wasn't your fault. You weren't even driving."

It was the wrong thing to say.

The tears that she'd been holding back spilled down her cheeks, and she stared up at him with wide remorseful eyes, struggling to admit to him what she'd never let herself forget. "I should have been. I should have picked him up myself instead of staying in work to finish my damn billing reports!"

"It wouldn't have made any difference, except that it would've been you in the wheelchair instead of your sister."

"No," It didn't matter how comforting it would have been to believe him, she knew it wasn't true. She took a deep gasping breath, closed her eyes, and somehow found the courage to tell him the rest. "It would have made a difference, because if I'd been driving I would have seen the red light, and the police wouldn't have found a half-smoked joint in the wreckage."

"Fuck!" House had no idea how to even begin to respond to that. "You mean -

Cuddy nodded "Please, don't tell anyone."

House didn't say anything for a long time afterward, but he didn't leave either, and at some point during the silence he reached over and took one of her fine-boned hands in his. It wasn't much, but it seemed to be enough for her, because eventually she managed a small sad smile.

He smiled back. "Who would I tell?" he asked quietly, "You know what Wilson's like with needy women. If he found out you came with this kind of emotional baggage he wouldn't be able to stop himself marrying you!"

And just like that, her sadness lifted. "Thanks,"

Maybe he wasn't as bad at this as he'd thought.

END.


End file.
